Everyone wants their machine to be faster. There are so many
myths regarding performance, we felt it was time to analyze all
the articles out there and put the answers in one place.
Computer company marketing departments work their magic to make
us believe that we need every new incantation of each product.
In this Hot Tip Article, we examine the real world performance
improvements of various upgrades in technology. We will present
you a short concise answer and include links to articles for
your reading pleasure. We also make some quick recommendations,
but for detailed suggestions in each category, please refer to
our database of specific products.

CPU Speed

How fast/slow is my Intel x86 Compatible CPU?

This table includes benchmarks for Ziff-Davis Benchmark
Operation's industry standard tests for both low-level CPU
performance, CPUmark99 and real world performance of business
applications, Winstone99 Business test. Some of these numbers
were measured on different systems and as such cannot be
directly compared, so they should be used as a ball park guides
only. Higher scores are better. Also note the AMD Athlon and
similar clock speed Pentium III Coppermine chips, perform fairly
close. Users should upgrade when they their applications are in
need of more speed. We have moved from a Pentium 200 to Pentium
II-266, and Pentium II-266 to Pentium III-450 and felt a large
speed increases. We recommend nothing slower than a Celeron 400
level CPU. You can use this chart coupled with past upgrading to
determine when you need to move to a faster system.

This table includes benchmarks for Ziff-Davis Benchmark
Operation's industry standard tests for both low-level CPU
performance, CPUmark99 and real world performance of business
applications, Winstone99 Business test. Some of these numbers
were measured on different systems and as such cannot be
directly compared, so they should be used as a ball park guides
only. Higher scores are better. You can use this chart coupled
with past upgrading to determine when you need to move to a
faster system.

Often time you can simply upgrade your computer's CPU to a
faster one by just plugging in a new CPU that is within the same
family. The same family will have the same socket type, voltage,
and bus speed type. Newer CPUs may require BIOS updates,
different voltages, bus speeds, or newer chipsets though. Check
with your motherboard vendor for details. Here is a list that
can help make your upgrading more sucessful:

Boy this is a dangerous question. We have PowerMac's and Pentium
4's, so we are probably less biased than most. The answer is
"It depends!". We are only interested in real-world
tests, not an artificial test shows the computer is great at
that benchmark.

Either platform will get any job done, albeit slightly faster or
slower. Your choice of Mac or PC is purely personal preference,
there is no right or wrong answer.

Processor Bus Speed

How much performance is gained by moving to a faster Bus?

This
article
shows that moving to a faster 1066Mhz bus speed on a new chipset
gives minimal gains on the Pentium 4.

Cache Speed

How much faster is processor with more cache?

This site benchmarks the Pentium 4 500 series with 1MB cache vs
600 series with 2MB cache at the same speed, and sees a little
speed boost.

CPU Chipsets

How much does performance differ between different Motherboards?

Benchmarks has shown the difference between different
motherboards using the same chipset to be minimal. Some of the
differences are from vendors slightly overclocking the
processor.

RAM

How does amount of RAM affect computer performance?

Upgrading RAM continued to increase performance under Windows
XP. 512MB of ram is probably the sweet spot.

Here is a
site with some useful low-level RAM performance
benchmarks for a variety of platforms. Results are included too.

How much faster is DDR2 memory?

Anandtech compared the performance of DDR2 Memory to DDR Memory
on the Intel 915/925 chipset platform. Users will see a speed
advantage with DDR2 with future implementations of faster DDR2
memory and chipsets, not the initial version.

Anandtech has reviews of the latest video cards.
Keep in mind Nvidia and ATI are constantly escalating their
performance battle. You'll pay top dollar to buy the fastest.

How fast is this video card?

Tom's has great charts that shows video card performance of the
latest cards.

Tom's has a great chart that shows video card performance of
most major video cards from the nVidia Geforce MX 440 to 5950,
and ATI 8500 to 9800XT.

Tom's has a great chart that shows video card performance of
most major video cards from the nVidia TNT2 to the nVidia
Geforce4.

How much faster is PCI Express?

This site compared the performance of AGP vs PCI Express on the
Intel 915/925 chipset platform. Users will see a speed advantage
with PCI Express with future implementations of Expansion cards
not the initial version.

How much faster is AGP than PCI?

This review has a
benchmark using the AGP and PCI version of the 3dfx Voodoo3 3000
video card. PCI's maximum data transfer rate is 133 MegaBytes
per second, while AGP's maximum data transfer rate is 533
MegaBytes per second. AGP allows for a direct connection between
video cards and memory, without interference from cards on the
PCI bus. The difference in performance between AGP and PCI was
+/- 1 frame per second in Unreal and Quake2. Also Unreal's
minimum frame rate increased about 10%. PCI video cards are
great for users without AGP slots and for people with slow
embedded video on the motherboard. Users with AGP slots should
always opt for AGP video cards. Some have stated that this card
does not have a true AGP interface, causing these results.
Future cards should perform faster under AGP.

How is 2D performance with nVidia video cards?

This
comparison shows that as 3D performance in games has risen
steadily, 2D performance as measured by ZD's benchmark programs
has started to plateau. Real world performance changes little
now.

Model

Quake3 800x600

Bus Graphics Winmark99

nVidia TNT

26

146

nVidia TNT2 Vanta
8MB

33.6

189

nVidia GeForce2
DDR

102

320

Source:
Techbargains (VC820, P3-733, W2K, 6.31 drivers)

Hard Drive Speed

How fast is my drive?

Hard drive
performance has been a limiting factor in Computers for a long
time. Drive speed is orders of magnitude slower than CPU and
memory. The following list of drives and performance numbers
gives users an idea of how fast or slow their drives are. The
numbers are based on the HDTach benchmark. We like
this benchmark because it is a low level benchmark unaffected by
the Operating System. It is fairly accurate, uses established
measurement metrix, and completes quickly. More 'Real world'
benchmarks include Winbench from ZDLabs and for
servers/workstations, Iometer from Intel. Interfaces continue to
exceed sustained data rates by a large factor. The ATA/133
interface can handle 133 MB/s but the fastest drive sustains
under 133 MB/s. The same goes for the Serial ATA interface. Do
spend money buying faster interfaces if your drive is not
bottlenecked.

What attributes are important in drives?

PCMag did a test of ATA vs Serial using the identical drive and
found that there was little improvement when using Serial ATA as
the drive did not hit the ATA 100MB/s bottleneck. Many Serial
ATA drives are IDE drives with Serial ATA adapter boards.

7200 RPM
hard drive was about 4-9% faster than its 5400 RPM counterpart.
A 8MB cache drive was about 5-6% faster than its 2MB cache
model.

Rated
speed is the average sustained media data transfer rate for the
drive taken from the drive's spec sheet. Most stats are in
MegaBytes per second except Access Time which is measured in
milliseconds. All drives IDE unless otherwise indicated. Some
benchmarks courtesy MaximumPC Magazine.

Drive

Rated Speed

t Av Transfer Rate

Burst

Access Time

Castlewood 2.2

12.2

9.5

23

Fujitsu MAM1834MC 15K U160

52.2

69.8

6

Fujitsu MAN3367MP

45.9

64.6

7.8

Fujitsu MPG3409AT-E

25

71

15.6

Fujitsu Ent 18.2 SCSI

37

25.3

59

8.2

Fujitsu MPG3204

25

69

15.2

Fujitsu 12GB 2.5

17

13.3

Hitachi E7K500 500GB 16MB cache SATA

64.2

206

12.9

Hitachi 7K500 500GB 16MB cache SATA
II

51.3

133

13.1-13.9

Hitachi 7K400 400GB 8MB cache SATA

45.8

112

12

Hitachi 7K250 250GB 8MB cache SATA

47.5-48.6

111.4-113

11.7-11.9

Hitachi HDS722525VLAT80 250GB 8MB
cache ATA

50.4

94.6

12

Hitachi 7K250 80GB 8MB cache SATA

47.7

80+

13.5

IBM 180GXP 180GB 8MB cache

45.5

80+

13

IBM 180GXP 60GB 2MB cache

44.6

80+

13.4

IBM DDYS-T36950 36GB 10K

28.8

69.9

8.7

IBM 36Z15 15K
U160

45.1

87

5.8

IBM 120GXP

36

38-38.1

80+

11.9

IBM 40G 60GXP

37

30.6-32

71

11.7-12.5

IBM 40GB 40GV
5400RPM

31

24.1

85

14.8

IBM 15GB 75GXP

37

28.7-29.2

80+

12.1-12.3

IBM 36LZX SCSI

29

30.4

79

6.8

IBM 36LP 9GB DPSS-309170N SCSI 7200

25.7

26

80+

11

IBM 18LZX SCSI

22.3

22.3

54

8.4

IBM 34GXP

18.8

19.8

IBM 12.7 2.5

15

14.4

Hitachi Travelstar E7K60 7200RPM 2.5

30

40

IBM Travelstar 40GNX 5400rpm 2.5

20

26

IBM Travelstar 8GBS 4900rpm 2.5

5.7

7.6

IBM Travelstar 20.4 2.5

15

13.5

IBM 22GXP

14

IBM UltraES 4.5 SCSI

10.8

10.8

17.6

12.6

IBM 14GXP

10.5

19

30

14.1

IBM Ultra2ES 2 SCSI

6.5

6.6

17.8

15.2

Iomega Jaz 1GB SCSI

5.2

8.1

19.6

Iomega Zip250 IDE

2.4

1.8

45.3

Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 11 500GB 16MB
7200 Serial ATA 3G

59

254

15.5ms

Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 10 300GB 16MB
7200 Serial ATA

52.2-57.5

118-138

13.7-15.7ms

Maxtor Atlas 15K Ultra 320 SCSI

upto 75

55.1

100

5.5ms

Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 250GB 8MB
7200 Serial ATA

47.56

105

13.3ms

Maxtor 300GB 5400RPM 2MB

38

86

20ms

Maxtor Diamondmax Ultra 200GB 8MB
7200 - 6Y200P

44.8

80+

13.2ms

Maxtor Atlas 10K
III

42

75.1

7.6

Maxtor Diamondmax
Plus 9 ATA133 8MB Cache

42.1

80+

14.7

Maxtor 6Y160M0 160GB 7200 Serial ATA
(Performance setting)

49.2

117.4

23.4ms

Maxtor Diamondmax
16 250GB 5400RPM

32.3

75.8

29.3

Maxtor D740-X-6L
40GB or 60GB

24.2

34.9-35.1

99

11.7-12.5

Maxtor D540X-4K
40GB 5400RPM

17.8

28.2-28.6

86

16

Maxtor Fireball 3 2F030J 5400 30GB

30.8

80+

21.6

Maxtor 531DX
2R015H1 15GB

upto 49.75

28.8

57.4

21.1

Maxtor 80

upto 46.7

24.2

17.2

Maxtor DM+ 60

upto 57

27.3

13.1

Maxtor DM+ 40
(51024U2)

upto 43.2

28

56

14

Maxtor 60

upto 40.8

22.3

53

14.5

Maxtor DM+6800 20.4

upto 33.7

20.6

56.6

13.9

Maxtor 6800 13.6

upto 27.8

22.6

57

-

Maxtor 7.5

21.9

12.7

23

14

Maxtor 2880 8.4

upto 15.2

11.4

25.9

14.8

Promise RAID 2-75GXP

38.6

85.8

Promise RAID 2-34GXP

27.6

Quantum Atlas 10K II SCSI

33

31

67

7.4-7.7

Quantum Fireball
Plus AS

30.2

80

13.1

Quantum LM 30

26

60

9.3

Quantum LCT20

18

23

17.8

Quantum Atlas V 36 SCSI

23

22.8

58

10.7

Quantum Fireball+ KX 27.3

19

58

11.7

Quantum Atlas IV 9.1 SCSI

17.5

17.7

28.9

10.8

Seagate Cheetah 15.3K SCSI

64.7

5.7

Seagate X15 36LP SCSI

53.9

93

5.9

Seagate Cheetah 36ES SCSI

49.9

73.3

8.7

Seagate Cheetah 73LP SCSI

50

45.6

80+

8.3-8.5

Seagate X15 18GB SCSI

42.5

36.8-38.7

59-67

5.4-6.5

Seagate Cheetah 36XL SCSI

40

34.8

8.4-8.7

Seagate Cheetah 18XL SCSI

33

35.6

55

9

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB
Serial ATA 3G, NCQ

66-66.9

236-253

13.4-14

Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB
Serial ATA 3G, NCQ

51.5-52.5

248

13.3-14.2

Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB
Serial ATA, NCQ

55.3-61.3

133

13.2-13.5

Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB
Serial ATA, NCQ off

60.4-61.3

94-135

15.2

Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB
Serial ATA

44.4

83.4

12.6

Seagate ST3160023A 160GB IDE

47.1

89.7

14.8

Seagate Barracuda ATA V 120GB

35

36.5-36.6

13-13.4

Seagate Barracuda ATA IV

35.6-38.7

67.7

14.5-14.8

Seagate Barracuda ATA III

34.3

80

14.5

Seagate Barracuda 180 SCSI

36

33.8

63

12

Seagate U6

24.8

69.8

20.4

Seagate U5

27

68

17.8

Seagate Barracuda II 30

30

24.6

48

13.2

Seagate Cheetah 18LP SCSI

29.5

22.5

57

9

Seagate Cheetah 9LP 39102LW SCSI

23.9

15.9

58

9.1

Seagate Cheetah 9 SCSI

14

16

8.7

WD Raptor WD1500 150GB 10K SerialATA

75.4-77.9

98-137

8.1-8.6

WD WD500KD Caviar SE 16MB 500GB
7200RPM Serial ATA

62.2-72

191-193

13.2-13.5ms

WD Raptor 740D 74GB 10K SerialATA

102

61.7-65.8

80+

7.5-7.9

WD Raptor 360D 36GB 10K SerialATA

55.1-58.7

73

8.1-8.5

WD WD400KD Caviar SE 16MB 400GB
7200RPM Serial ATA

57

138

13.1ms

WD Caviar WD2500KS 16MB 7200RPM
250GB Serial ATA 3G

53

173

13.3ms

WD Caviar SE WD3200JB 8MB 7200RPM
320GB Serial ATA

53.72

78

13.3ms

WD Caviar SE WD2500JB 8MB 7200RPM
250GB Serial ATA

48.9

70

13.4ms

WD Caviar SE WD2000JB 8MB 7200RPM
200GB

46-48.6

76.5

13.6-14.1ms

WD Caviar SE WD800JB 8MB 7200RPM
80GB

40.5

WD Caviar SE 1200JB 8MB 7200RPM
120GB

Up to 65

37.4

80+

14.4

WD Caviar SE 800JB 8MB 7200RPM 80GB

40.5

13

WD Caviar 1200BB or 1000BB 7200RPM

Up to 65

39.9

57.9

13.4

WD Caviar 600BB or 800BB 7200RPM

Up to 40

31.1

85

13.2

WD Caviar 200BB

Up to 50

24.2

80

13.9

WD Protege 200EB

18.4

80

18.1

WD Caviar 400BB 7200

40

23.7

WD Caviar 400AB 5400

21.1

85

14.9

WD Caviar 20.4

29

21.3

49

13.3

WD Caviar 20

19

14.4

27

12.7

How do the various Storage interfaces compare?

IDE is the
primary storage interface of choice, because it offers good
performance at a low price. IDE is limited to two devices per
channel. Most motherboards have two IDE channels. Serial ATA is
slowly replacing IDE. It is faster and uses smaller cables. SCSI
is a more advanced interface that offers higher performance for
high-end applications such as RAID and servers. SCSI allows for
upto 15 devices on a wide bus and supports multiple concurrent
operations. 1394 aka Firewire is mainly used for connecting DV
camcorders to computers, but is also used for connecting hard
drives to computers. 1394 is hotpluggable and uses a small
'Gameboy' style interconnect. USB is a slow interface designed
to connect peripherals such as mice, keyboards, printers, and
scanners to a computer. FibreChannel is an advanced storage
interface used to connect high speed storage devices to servers.
Keep in mind that these are the maximum transfer rates these
buses operate at. There are no storage devices that can sustain
these rates. (Except for perhaps a RAMdisk)

Interface

Type

Transfer Rate (MB/s)

USB

1.0

1.5

USB

2.0

60

Ethernet

100Base-T

12.5

Ethernet

Gigabit -
1000Base-T

125

Firewire

1394

50

Firewire

1394b

400

IDE

UltraDMA/66

66

IDE

UltraDMA/100

100

IDE

UltraDMA/133

133

Serial ATA

Serial ATA

187.5

Serial ATA

Serial ATA II

375

SCSI

Ultra-160

160

SCSI

Ultra-320

320

FibreChannel

Duplex -Giga

200

What are the Maximum Cable Lengths of Interfaces?

Different
types of interfaces have different maximum lengths based on
their specification. Slower interfaces usually can have longer
lengths. Serial interfaces that send data one byte at a time can
usually also have longer lengths.

Interface

Type

Maximum Length

SCSI

Fast

3 meters

SCSI

Ultra

1.5 meters

SCSI

Ultra2 LVD

12 meters

Firewire

1394

14 feet

Parallel

IEEE 1284

33 feet

Serial

RS-232

50
feet

USB

1.5 Mbs

10 feet

USB

12 Mbs

16 feet

Ethernet

10Base-T

100 meters

Ethernet

100Base-T

100 meters

Fibre

100Base-FX

1 km

How much does a fast hard drive speedup system performance?

This
article shows Winstone99 speed increases when using a faster
drive on a Pentium II 400. Moving from a old 4.3GB 5400 RPM
drive to a 8.4 GB Western Digital 5400 RPM drive gives a 20%
improvement in Business Winstone 99. Moving to the fast 7200 RPM
Ultra ATA/66 drive causes a 30% improvement. Moving from as 5400
RPM Western Digital Drive to a 7200 RPM version of a similar
drive yields a small 5% improvement. When we moved from an
Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 40 to an IBM 75GXP drive Windows 2000
Server boot times dropped from 46 to 40 seconds. When we moved
from a slow IBM 4GB SCSI drive to a IBM 75GXP drive Windows 200
boot times dropped 10%, Desktop load time dropped 30% even
though transfer rates tripled. We recommend users utilize at a
minimum 8.4 GB or larger 5400 RPM Ultra ATA drives with 20
MB/sec sustained transfer rates to ensure they have a modern
drive with decent performance.

How much does RAID speedup system performance?

RAID 0
stripes information across multiple hard drives, enhancing
performance. 2 drives can give you almost double the transfer
rates of a single drive. Real world performance shows that RAID
only helps speed up applications that transfer large blocks of
data such as Video and Color Publishing. The overhead involved
in setting up transfers negates any benefits for typical
applications that read small chunks of data.
This review helps show the benefits of RAID when everything is
setup correctly. Keep in mind that if one drive fails, you have
lost all information. Backup often!

How much slower is a hard disk than RAM?

The hard
drive is one of the biggest bottlenecks in most computers.
Accessing data on a hard drive is orders of magnitude slower
than accessing information in RAM or in the CPU's registers.
This table illustrates the difference:

Memory Storage

Access Speed

CPU Register

1 ns

CPU Level 1 Cache
Memory

2 ns

CPU Level 2 Cache
Memory

5-10 ns

Main Memory
(PC133)

60-100ns

Hard Drive

10 million ns
(10ms)

Source MSDN News
July/August 2001

CD/DVD Speed

How much faster is a CD/DVD Drive?

Here is a
comparison
of CD-ROM low-level performance test. They also cover DVD
drives. A 1x CD-ROM drive transfers data at 150 KB/sec. From
those reviews, a drive's X factor and how fast it can transfer
CD-Audio are totally unrelated. This
article comparing several DVD-ROM kits, showed that a faster
drive lead to faster search times for Microsoft Encarta, but not
in installation times for software. In this
article they found that faster drives did not help in a slide
show or PhoneDisc search, but they did help in tests with AAA
Map'n'go travel route software. We recommend users have at least
a 24x CD-ROM drive for decent performance, but more importantly
CD-RW media compatibility. Avoid CD-ROM drives that are
extremely fast, they are also extremely noisy and may not read
certain CDs.

Unfortunately the faster networking 100 Base-T standard does not
lead to networks that are 10 times faster, but ones that are
about
four times faster . Because there is so little price
differential between both standards, opt for 100 Base-T
networking.

How do the new alternatives for Home Networking compare?

While the
new technologies for linking up computers via Phoneline, AC, or
wireless are promising, they often perform
poorly compared to Ethernet.

How fast is are connection by DSL or Cable?

According
to
Maximum PC , both technologies were 10 times faster hitting a
their home page, 20 to 60 times faster downloading files, and 13
times faster uploading files than 56K modem. Cable modems with
Ethernet connections are typically rated for 10 Mb/second
downstream with some claiming 30 Mb/second. The fastest download
performance we've heard about is 750K/s = 6 Megabits/second.
Most DSL implementations are rated for a maximum of 1.5
Mb/second downstream. An article in Maximum PC, November 1999,
showed that while Cable modem performance could be up to 20%
faster, it varied greatly between tests, sometimes taking 2 to 3
times longer than normal, while DSL throughput remained
consistent. DSL had much faster upload times. Cable modems offer
best performance during the day when most users are at work but
slow down at night when most users are home, while DSL gives
consistent throughput. We run DSL and are very pleased with its
performance. Maximum DSL performance is claimed to be 8.448
Megabits per second.

Connection

Download Speed

Upload Speed

56k Modem

53

33.6

ISDN

64 - 128

64 - 128

DirectPC

400

33.6

xDSL

144 - 6144

90 - 1536

Cable

384 - 10000

33.6 - 2560

T1 or DS1

128 - 1536

128 - 1536

T3 or DS3

44,736

44,736

OC-1

51,840

51,840

OC-192

9,953,280

9,953,280

(In Kilobits per
second. Higher numbers better)

Sound Quality

What is the difference between an audio card and motherboard
audio?

The signal-to-noise ratio is typically poor (Audigy 2 ZS
108dB), 3D audio support is limited, and since all the
processing is main CPU based, games that use lots of audio
channels can slow down a bit.

Software Is Windows XP faster?

This site benchmarked XP against 2000 and Windows ME and found
it a little faster but a lot more stable.

Digital Camera Performance

How close is digital camera performance to a traditional 35MM
film camera? Many
people believe anything on paper above 200 pixels-per-inch
starts to look like a photo, with 300 dpi being an
accepted standard for photo quality. A 2 megapixel camera can
provide that type of resolution for small 4 x 6 print images.
7.2 mega pixels are needed to provide 300 dpi in a 8x 10 print.
(300 dpi x 8 = 2400 dots, 300dpi x 10 = 3000 dots, 2400 x 3000 =
7,200,000) Professional medium format studio cameras, which many
cannot tell apart from film, are in the 6 mega pixel range.